10 Most Imaginative Shots On Film

1. The Star Gate - 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is an epoch-making cinematic achievement from beginning to end, and even if the movie doesn't connect for you entirely, it's basically impossible to argue with the impeccable craft on display.

This is exemplified perhaps no better - and certainly no more inventively - than in the lengthy sequence where Dr. Bowman (Keir Dullea) takes a traumatic, visually stunning trip through a Star Gate.

Kubrick and legendary special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull achieved the artful barrage of patterned light through slit-scan photography, where coloured images are passed in front of a camera for a long period of exposure, creating those unforgettable psychedelic planes.

It's an almost peerlessly hypnotic piece of photography that still has new audiences begging the question, "How the hell did they do that?" even half a century later.

What do you make of these insanely imaginative shots? Got any other suggestions? Shout them out in the comments!